Gushes & rants about the things in our heads

Cold Fear by Toni Anderson

A relentless FBI profiler hunts a vicious killer.
When old evidence turns up on a fresh corpse, ASAC Lincoln Frazer is determined it won’t delay the execution of a convicted serial killer. But when more young women are brutally slain, it becomes clear—this new killer is intimately familiar with the old murders.
A dedicated emergency physician hides a dark secret.
Former Army Captain Dr. Isadora Campbell helped her mother hide a terrible crime. After her mother’s death, Izzy resigned her commission and returned to the Outer Banks to raise her rebellious teenage sister. But it doesn’t take long for Izzy to suspect that someone knows exactly what she did, all those years ago.
If they work together, maybe no one else will die.
With pressure mounting to reopen the old case, Frazer will use any means possible to catch the killer. Thrust together during the investigation, he and Izzy find themselves reluctantly attracted to one another, and begin an affair. Meanwhile, the killer is much closer than they think. Izzy’s confession of her secret drives Frazer away as he struggles with her deception. By the time he realizes he’s fallen in love with the stubborn woman, the killer has her. Now the race is on to save Izzy, and any chance of a future they might have together.

‘Cold Fear’ is ASAC Lincoln Frazer’s (or probably better remembered as the emotionless, cold bastard in the rest of the Cold Justice series) story, which happens when a mishap with Mallory Rooney and Alex Parker forces him to take a trip to the Outer Banks in search of a serial killer. It’s there that he meets Isadora Campbell, a former Army doctor who resigned to be the legal guardian of her younger sister, and whose secrets will hinder his investigative work – despite how much they’re drawn to each other.

As far as it goes, this is a pretty solid read that’s as expected from the calibre of Toni Anderson, at least when it comes to the tightly-written procedural drama that ensues from the very beginning. While I don’t necessarily buy the miraculous quickness with which Izzy and Linc fall for each other (I’ve always though it takes months or years for barriers to fall), Frazer’s story is like a gripping episode in a drama series (without much of a continuing story arc anywhere else) that doesn’t involve anything more exotic like international spies and assassins, but Ms. Anderson nails the atmosphere and the grittiness of the dirty secrets people keep in a small town.